The Persistence of Memory
by rhyme time
Summary: Post-ep for 7x13. Booth has difficulty adjusting to his family's absence.


The Persistence of Memory

Author's Notes: Post-ep for 7x13. Title inspired by Salvador Dali's painting of the same name. I'm a little undecided about whether or not to continue this story. For now, it's a one-shot.

xXx

Pelant is a model citizen. He tutors and teaches and pays for his groceries in cash. On Saturday mornings, he jogs around his neighborhood with a plastic bag and picks up litter. He keeps to himself. His life is so unremarkable that even Booth is bored by him. He stakes out Pelant's apartment and his workplace until he is served with a restraining order that disallows continued surveillance. There is no evidence that ties him to the murder of Ethan Sawyer and even less that proves he framed Brennan.

With Brennan and Christine gone, Booth returns to work and is chained to a desk (on probation, no less, after all trouble with Pelant), but as he mindlessly works through task after mundane task he listens to the other agents discussing Pelant and him and Brennan. Flynn is more interested in apprehending Brennan than investigating Pelant. Of course, everyone agrees that her going on the run makes her look guilty, but many of the agents that have met her are not convinced she's a murderer. He's a little surprised by their restraint. Maybe they've learned a thing or two from her after all.

With Flynn uninterested in investigating Pelant, the Jeffersonian team out of leads, and him required by the restraining order to stay away from Pelant, despair morphs into depression. Hodgins and Angela and Cam invite Booth to dinner and out for drinks at the Founding Fathers but seeing Hodgins hold Michael makes the ache inside him more pronounced and although Cam asserts that she did the right thing, she asserts it often, which grates on his nerves. She did the right thing, he knows this, but he's tired of hearing her remind herself.

Booth has threatened Sweets with physical harm if he tries to psychoanalyze him one more time, and he tries his best to avoid him. He keeps the door to his office closed and when he's out and about he keeps his head down. He screens his calls during the day and turns off his phone at night. He doesn't go to the diner or anywhere frequented by other agents, Sweets, or their friends, which means that most of the time his lunch drops out of the vending machine and dinner consists of whatever alcohol is within reach.

Another day ends, another day begins.

In their personal relationship, the only time he and Brennan discussed money was when they were buying a house. Initially, they agreed to a fifty-fifty split based on what he could afford; however, their house was well under their price range, and Brennan convinced him to make the mortgage payments and let her cover the renovations so that they could maximize their investment. He knew the renovations would cost a fortune, but he didn't argue. They had a home.

Two weeks after watching her drive away, Flynn knocks on the door to his office. He says he wants to talk. Booth waves him in, and Flynn takes a seat in front of his desk. His colleague is quiet for a moment, and Booth senses that he's debating how to proceed. Flynn wants to know if Booth knows how much Brennan is worth. Booth answers truthfully that they've never really discussed the specifics of her income.

"I know she's well off," Booth says.

Flynn smirks. "That's an understatement, Agent Booth."

Flynn informs Booth that when taking into account her job at the Jeffersonian, speaking engagements, her academic lectures, seminars, and special appearances, her best-selling books, the payout from the studio for _Bone of Contention _and other contracts with the studio including options for screenplays on all her other books (Booth did not realize she'd signed more than one contract with the studio), and her very wise and lucrative investments, her net worth is around 27 million dollars and that before the FBI froze her accounts, in the US and abroad, a substantial amount of money was moved around and is now missing.

"How much?" Booth asks.

Flynn looks him in the eye in an effort to determine what he knows. "A little over a million dollars."

Brennan having a million dollars at her disposal forces Booth to acknowledge that he may not see her or Christine for much longer than he planned, which is already too long. He would gladly give up his position at the FBI to be with them. His and Brennan's partnership is more than work now. He could take the job offered him on the studio lot. They could move to California and buy a beachfront home and raise Christine in the sunshine.

The excessive drinking starts a few days after Flynn's visit. He just wants to feel the pain of his family's absence less. He doesn't go to the Founding Fathers or ask anyone to join him or pretend he's trying to do anything other than make the pain go away. He just sits in their house with a snifter full of whiskey and drinks until the images of their nearly perfect life blur enough for him to sleep.

He sleeps in their bed and it's too big and too cold and too empty without her beside him. He misses the rise of her hip under the sheet and the weight of her heavy breasts in his hands. He misses making love and late night conversations over dinner and he even misses Christine's tearful interruptions.

He wanders into their daughter's room (Brennan insisted they paint the nursery in gender neutral tones, and he picked out a wall paint called mellow yellow), and he takes one look at the mobile Parker made for his sister and her crib with her blanket and toys still in it before turning and leaving the room and closing the door behind him. The thought hits him, briefly, that by the time his family comes home his daughter may have outgrown her bed.

Three and a half weeks after he watched his family drive away, he gets a postcard in the mail. It's postmarked Jersey City, New Jersey, so he knows one place in the world they're not. He wonders if they're out of the country. She certainly has the financial means and contacts around the world to facilitate transportation out of the United States. Jersey City is in close proximity to three major airports. The ache in his chest radiates throughout his body and he feels like he might be having a heart attack. He sits down and reads the words she wrote to him:

_We're safe. She cries for you. We miss you so much. I love you._

It's the letter that awakens the gambler in him. Sometimes, with her, it seems like all he ever does is lose. He just wants to win at something.

His streak is incredible. He plays pool and poker and he drinks and he wins and he forgets for a few hours every night that she's not at home waiting for him.

The establishments he frequents are not short on women, beautiful and desperate, but that's the one area in which he's not tempted. All those years ago, he wasn't lying: Brennan is the standard. Everyone since he met her has been a distraction or a substitution or both. So when women approach him or get too close he tells them to back off or laughs at them for even thinking they have a chance. He's rude and mean as hell because a kind refusal doesn't get their attention.

Sometimes, as he's laying down a bet, he thinks of her and what she's doing and what she'd think of him now. Even through the haze of alcohol and guilt her opinion of him matters. But the pain of her absence is stronger than what he imagines she might think of him and so he keeps betting and he keeps winning. He wishes he would lose because then it wouldn't be so easy to keep making the same mistake every night.

He stops sleeping in their bed because every night the memory of them ghosts over him and he wants so badly to feel her. His hand is no substitute for her warm, live body. He misses her contradictions – the often hard edge in her tone, and the impossible gentleness of her touch.

The first time they made love it was brought on by grief and it was, perhaps, infused with more comfort than lust. And then she was pregnant: Seeley Booth had made his moment count.

He was gentle with her, he had to be because she was pregnant and he was in awe, every day, that this was really happening between them. She told him she wouldn't break but he just couldn't bring himself to pound into her like their child wasn't nestled in her womb.

And, then, after the baby he was gentle because it was required. Their sex life was good and satisfying.

She claimed not to care about the changes in her body but he noticed she wore a lot of layers and stood with her arms crossed over her midsection. It was his job to pick up on human behavior. There was no way for him to bring it up without seeming like he was bothered by the changes in her body so he stayed silent and attentive.

When she fit into a pair of jeans she wore before her pregnancy, he heard a relieved sigh from the closet. A few days later the layers were peeled away and she uncrossed her arms and then she was there, in front of him, full of a different kind of longing.

Her pregnancy had cast a different light on their relationship and although they'd known each other for years, they'd only had nine months to intimately familiarize themselves with one another, and their child was also always a consideration. From the beginning they'd been worried about how the pregnancy would affect them, then searching for a home had been a consuming task, him worrying about her in the field soon followed, navigating relationship minefields proved to be a distraction, and then the renovations on the house took up the last months of her pregnancy. There had not been time to revel in the joy of simply being together. Everything was backward and out of order but he was just so damn happy they were in it together.

So when their daughter was finally asleep and she stood before him totally vulnerable and filled with desire, he was a little thrown. There were no distractions. In the rush of life she'd managed to carve out a space just for them. That night was a different kind of lovemaking. She wanted him, and he wanted her, and they were allowed, now, to be together in this way. The demands of the world, even their daughter's, faded away and there was an intensity present that had never been present before. He didn't feel the need to be gentle and she urged him on with words and the scrape of her nails down his back. It was sweaty and messy and perfect and they spent the next week and a half learning each other in new ways.

And then Pelant reentered their lives and even though they are together, stronger than ever, he's lost her again.

He lifts a beer bottle to his lips because he doesn't want to remember how good it was between them and how, for all the worry and the hedging and the pain they inflicted on one another, being together has been so much easier than they imagined.

He wants to tell her she's good at relationships (He never did and he regrets now that he never took the time to broach the difficult subjects with her). He cannot believe his fucking luck that she's his and he wants to thank God that the men that came before him were distracted and put off and scared away by her defenses. Her heart is expertly guarded but inside her walls, inside all of her logic and rationality and the edge almost always in her tone, he has found her. He knows her in a way no one else knows her and this knowledge of such an amazing human being fills him with gratitude.

To say he misses her does not scratch the surface of what he feels.

He bets his entire paycheck on a losing hand but he wins anyway. He's always been lucky at cards.

A woman approaches him and he tells her to go to hell. A man is with her, a friend or brother, and he warns Booth about his tone. Booth picks a fight because he can, because he wants someone to hurt as badly as he hurts, and after he kicks the guy's ass and breaks a few tables and chairs the police are called and he's taken into custody.

The irony of him being in jail while Brennan remains free is not lost on him. Seven hours later a guard informs him he has a visitor. He hasn't used his one phone call because he doesn't know where she is and he doesn't want to go home anyway. He derives no comfort from being in their house. Around every corner are memories of them wrapped in the suffocating weight of her absence.

Booth is seated in a stall and looks through the glass at an older man with gray hair and a kind face. The man motions at Booth to pick up the phone.

"Who are you?" Booth asks.

"My name is Charles Reid, and I'm your attorney," he says.

Booth balks. "I didn't—"

Reid interrupts, "Dr. Brennan has had me on retainer for years. A little over a month ago, she called and said she was going on vacation, but she left strict instructions that if you ever needed an attorney, I was expected to fill the role."

Booth holds up his hand. "I don't need an attorney."

"With all due respect, Agent Booth, your partner is on the run with your daughter and her ex-con father in an effort to avoid an arrest warrant for murder, while you seem hell bent on a path of self-destruction that includes revisiting all your old vices. You do realize you're in jail, correct? You definitely need an attorney," Reid says.

"How do you know what I've been doing?" Booth asks.

Reid smiles. "I make it my business to know, Agent Booth."

Booth sighs. "Have you been in contact with her? Does she know about all this?" he asks, gesturing around him.

"I haven't been in contact with her, Agent Booth. And even if I had, it is not my place to tell her about your troubles."

It is then that Booth realizes he may have been subconsciously trying to orchestrate her return. Sweets would say it's a cry for help. He hates his inability to function without her. He hates even more that she is probably on the run and still working on her bid for mother of the year, making sure Christine is healthy and happy and perfectly cared for.

Reid arranges Booth's release and for all the charges to be dropped. Booth doesn't ask how he does this because he doesn't want to know. The older man gives Booth a ride home. As they are pulling into Booth's driveway, Reid hands hims an envelope.

On the front of the envelope, his name is written in Brennan's neat handwriting: _Seeley Booth, care of Charles Reid._ He tears open the letter: _Trust him. He's on our side. Love, Bones_. He turns over the letter and envelope in his hands. The envelope is postmarked the day she left.

Booth pushes open the car door and gets out. "Thanks, Charles," he says.

Reid nods. "Call me if you require my services, Agent Booth," he says, handing Booth his card.

Booth closes the door of the car and warily approaches his house.

He was lucky enough to get arrested on a Friday night and therefore his Saturday is wide open. He drives to the liquor store on the corner and picks up four six packs of beer. Saturday passes in a drunken haze, for which he is grateful. Sunday begins with him lying on the floor of the downstairs bathroom.

By noon, he's had four beers and is working on number five.

The image of Brennan is embossed forever on his brain. He knows her face – he knows her expressions, the shell of her ear, the strong line of her jaw. He's had less time to memorize his daughter, though. He finds himself forgetting things – everything except her eyes, which are exactly the color of her mother's – and he starts to panic. He digs through pictures but it isn't enough. It isn't the same.

And then he remembers his security system. His security system backs up digital files for three months. A month and a half has already gone by since she left but he has a month and a half of his family on file.

They aren't exactly home movies but he can relearn the shape of his daughter's head and see himself holding her.

He queues the files and thinks he'll start backward so he'll end on a happy memory. He finds the file for the day they left, wanting to watch them watching their daughter, and he sees Pelant in his house taking pictures of his daughter's room. He sees Pelant going into his and Brennan's bedroom but what he does in their bedroom remains a mystery because the only bedroom in which there is a camera is Christine's.

He's so stunned that he sits there for a moment.

He takes out his phone and dials Flynn because he wants him to have a front row seat for this. He calls Cam and tells her to bring the team.

"Are you drunk, Seeley?" Cam asks.

He clears his throat. "A little. Yes," he answers.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

He throws away his empty beer bottle. "Not even a little bit," he answers honestly.

"I know you miss them," she says.

"I miss Christine. I don't know…with Bones it's different."

Cam searches for her keys. "You're angry…"

Booth interrupts, "No, I'm not angry at her at all. I understand why she did this. It was the right call."

"But –"

He sits down on the brown, leather chair in the family room. "It's more than missing her, Camille. I've loved her for a long time. Sometimes I think she's like an addiction – missing doesn't quite cover it, withdrawal is closer."

"I'll be there within an hour," she says.

And then he calls Charles because he needs to know someone is on his side. He hangs up the phone and stares at Pelant's smiling face frozen on the screen.

Booth smiles back.

-End-


End file.
